1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to multi-wing aircraft, especially those whose fuselages have a lift-providing, airfoil shape (i.e., airfoil fuselage aircraft). More particularly, this invention relates to a very heavy payload, multi-wing aircraft that is especially adapted to operate: (a) at fuel consumption rates per pound of materials transported that are comparable to those achievable with intercontinental container ships and less than those achievable by utilizing trucking to reach inland destinations, but (b) with transport delivery times that are less than one-fifth those of intercontinental container ships and less than one-half those of trucking, and (c) with environmental emissions per pound of materials transported that are a fraction of those now being emitted by intercontinental container ships. Such an aircraft can greatly reduce the shipping costs of both imported products and those products that must travel many miles to distant inland markets.
2. Description of the Related Art
Patents for airfoil fuselage aircraft have been in existence for more than seventy years. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,758,498, 2,224,641, 2,380,290, 2,616,639, 2,685,420, 4,566,657, 5,082,204, 6,098,922, 6,834,832, D162,517, D198,610 and D199,510. Among these patents are those that pertain to the “Bernoulli Lifting Body,” see http://www.burnelli.com/wp/history. Despite these patents and apparent significant efforts to develop airfoil fuselage aircraft, few prototypes of such aircraft ever appear to have been constructed and extensively flown.
The positive attributes of such aircraft would seem to imply that their greatness usefulness might be as transport vehicles in heavy payload applications, where their positive attributes include: the added lift generated by an airfoil fuselage enables such an aircraft to handle greater payloads, and such greater payload capabilities offer the hope for them to operate more fuel efficiently (i.e., have lower fuel consumption rates per pound of materials transported).
However, the operational performance improvements, achievable heretofore by utilizing airfoil fuselage technology, etc. to develop new and improved cargo transport aircraft, appear not to have been of sufficiently large magnitude so as to justify air cargo shippers changing from their present fleets of aircraft.
Meanwhile, some of the more interesting attempts to create more fuel efficient, inter-continental, over-the-ocean, heavy transport aircraft seem to be centered on the development of what are known as “ground effect” (ground-effect) or “wing-in-ground (WIG)” aircraft. What makes these aircraft so unique is that they primarily are designed to fly only a few meters over the ground/ocean in order to take advantage of the fuel efficiency savings that are reportedly up to thirty five percent less than those for comparable aircraft flying at high altitudes. For more information on such aircraft, see “The WIG Page” at http://www.se-technology.com/wig/index.php.
Perhaps prior cargo transport, aircraft developers have not been sufficiently ambitious in their development efforts. What if, rather than trying to just replace current cargo aircraft with new and improved versions, cargo transport aircraft developers were to seek to create an entirely new type of airfoil fuselage aircraft that could capture more of the transport market for: (a) intercontinental, over-the-ocean container shipments (i.e., not just that small percentage of the market which is willing to pay the much higher per pound shipping cost for overnight delivery of air-freight as opposed to the lower per pound shipping costs for container ship transport whose trip duration can easily take several days), and (b) truck shipping to distant inland markets.
With the average fuel consumption rate per pound of materials transported by current over-night, air-freight deliveries estimated to be more than forty times that of container ship transport, the task of developing an entirely new type of multi-wing, airfoil fuselage aircraft that can in any way compete with and even take transport market share away from container ships seems like a very daunting task.
However, container transport shipping does have some serious challenges and problems that appear to be escalating rapidly and which could soon drastically, adversely impact their operating cost. For example, container ships may eventually have to install costly air scrubbing devices to further clean up their current noxious emissions. It is estimated that the annual emissions of supposed cancer and asthma-causing chemicals from one giant container ship is equivalent to that of 50 million cars. Consequently, 15 of the world's biggest container ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's estimated 760 million cars. See “Health Risks of Shipping Have Been Underestimated”, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution. Meanwhile, the environmental emissions per pound of materials transported by a properly designed, heavy payload, multi-wing, comparatively slow-moving, airfoil fuselage aircraft would be expected to be a fraction of those now being emitted by intercontinental container ships. Thus, there would appear to be a need and an opportunity for the unique aircraft disclosed herein.